Outsourcing is a source of anxiety for several people I know. It’s been a steady trend, and it’s been brought closer to the forefront, because a slow economy pushes for costcutting measures.

On [Reason]:http://www.reason.com. there’s an article by Ted Balaker called [War Against the Machines: Why are protectionists endangering American jobs?]:http://www.reason.com/hod/tb031904.shtml . I’m not sure I buy all of the article, but it’s a good read, and thought-provoking anyway.

Consider:
> Oh, you’re afraid of layoffs? Well, just make yourself more marketable. Oh, you just got out of a master’s program from a top university? Oh, then your company won’t be laying you off– you’re young and you’ve got current skills. What? Your company is laying off people like you? Hmmm… I’m not sure what to do about that…

I think the reality is that even real talent can get laid off. Sometimes a company just can’t afford to pay for the best when they only need some simple work done. Outsourcing and layoffs… I don’t think I’ve resolved the issue for myself yet.

I’ve started checking out some blogs from Iraq. Here’s a few I found interesting…

[Citizen Smash]:http://www.lt-smash.us/ blog about [Milblogs]:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/840fvgmo.asp
[Magic in the Baghdad Cafe]:http://bear.typepad.com/magic_in_the_baghdad_cafe/ A Nurse stationed in the 21st CSH 8/2003 to 2/2004
[Bob Zangas]:http://zangasiniraq.militarypages.com/ Bob(RIP, sadly) worked in Public Affairs at the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq
[Baghdad Burning]:http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ “Girl Blog from Iraq”
[by the rivers of babylon]:http://phlebotomus.blogspot.com/ “making the most of my deployment to Iraq”
[where is raed]:http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ Salam Pax: Iraqi from Baghdad (who? ask [slate,]:http://slate.msn.com/id/2083847/ [guardian]:http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,966819,00.html )
[turningtables]:http://turningtables.blogspot.com/ a US soldier (returned in Sept 2003) also: [his photoblog]:http://moja-vera.fotopages.com/
[Healing Iraq]:http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/ an Iraqi dentist

I saw this discussion on [Plastic]:www.plastic.com today about [Starting The Economic Race 50 Yards Behind]:http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=04/03/17/22184414 .

> American youths are forced to choose between good credit and the chance of upward mobility.

One of the points: Society promulgates the model of going to college and then finding a decent job to pay off your student loans. But public-service or nonprofit jobs usually don’t cut it for paying off that student debt.

Source material for the discussion was an article from the Village Voice: [The Ambition Tax]:http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0411/fkoerner.php

All too often do we see only one side of an issue. It often feels that the more controversial the issue, the more polarized and emotionally charged the available media. The Iraq issue is no exception.

Check out [Faith, Shame, and Insurgency: Life in occupied Iraq]:http://www.reason.com/0403/fe.sv.faith.shtml It’s an interesting look from the perspective of a reporter who decided to visit Iraq and see if his views on the situation hold up in the face of the truth there.

[Confessions of a Welfare Queen]:http://www.reason.com/0403/fe.js.confessions.shtml talks about how the government hands out welfare to those already wealthy. An interesting read, if you’re not sick of reading about free market and subsidies.

Mike’s Link Blog – Very Scary S*** About John Ashcroft

Pardon the profanity, but here’s a repost of a Vanity Fair article on John Ashcroft called “JOHN ASHCROFT’S PATRIOT GAMES”. At first I was wondering why I should need to know these personal details about our nation’s attorney general, but as I read, I thought, Dang, this is important stuff.

What’s up with blogging, and why should you care? – TechUpdate – ZDNet

A sort of hodgepodge of details of what a blog is. Not a great summary, but perhaps useful for someone new to blogs.

The [Words]:http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/ archive has [H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine]:http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/W/WellsHerbertGeorge/prose/timemachine/index.html and [George Orwell’s 1984]:http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/NineteenEightyFour/index.html , amongst other cool pieces of classic literature.

[Project Gutenberg]:http://promo.net/pg/index.html ‘s probably got way more, but hey, Words has Orwell.

Also check out [Twenty Great American Short Stories]:http://www.americanliterature.com/SS/SSINDX.HTML , because everything there’s quick enough to read over lunch or a coffee break.

[What You Can’t Say]:http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

This is a pretty nifty article that compares clothing fashion to moral fashion. Paul Graham is quite the writer. He’s also got cool stuff on programming (like on how LISP helps you [Beat the Averages]:http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html ), if you’re into that sort of thing.

> Excerpt:
Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And we had no idea how silly we looked. It’s the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to all of us riding on it.

> What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They’re just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they’re much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.

Yipee! I got a blog now! (cheers quietly..)